Burning (2018, Lee Chang-dong)

Awkward Jongsu bumps into former classmate Haemi (Jong-seo Jun), who looks extremely cute peeling and eating a nonexistent orange. I thought about the orange for the rest of the movie – not really there, but appearing to be – as the story ambiguously unfolds, Jongsu constantly frustrated and starting to pin all his problems on the guy Haemi brings back from abroad before disappearing, Ben (Steven Yeun, union leader of Sorry To Bother You). Uncertainties pile up until Jongsu takes decisive action at the end.

The margins of the central enigma are steeped in uncertainty, every character untrustworthy — enhanced by an intensely unsettling mise en scène that feels simultaneously sacred and profane at every instant. Characters subtly morph — psychologically, physically — over the course of its running time, to the point where I was questioning my own perceptual stability; a remarkable effect that, in retrospect, is absolutely part of the film’s design. As I mentioned earlier, Burning could, in addition to being exemplary cinema, easily coast on being a handsome piece of genre-singed social commentary — the outward villain, Ben, is referred to as a “Gatsby” at one point, expressing a widespread ire toward those effortlessly, unconscionably wealthy Korean men who somehow dominate the country.